Photo © Roger Cox. Please do not re-post without permission.

On a very welcome holiday break from Halifax in the summer of 1966 I came across these East Kent Guy Arab IIIs shoved away at the side of the Rye depot. At the front is EFN201, Guy Arab III with Park Royal L27/26R body delivered in July 1950.
Behind are two unidentified others of the same type. The position of the offside driving mirror is interesting, but this seems to have been standard on these buses.The East Kent fleet of lowbridge Arabs was undergoing complete withdrawal by this time, and this seems to be the sad fate of the three buses here.
After 1959 the East Kent double deck fleet saw the melodious warble of Wolverhampton being supplanted, and ultimately ousted, by the insistent screams of Southall, as Regent Vs became the standard decker, supplemented by three Bridgemasters. Very probably the BET policy of ‘Preferred Suppliers’ was instrumental in this transfer of allegiance between chassis manufacturers, but East Kent stayed with Park Royal even when that firm’s double deck body design plummeted to its nadir of ugliness.
On the right is Timpsons CUW565C, AEC Reliance 2MU4RA with Duple Commander C41F body wearing the garish Detroit inspired(?) front grille that began emerging on the firm’s products around 1964. A comparison in aesthetics with the Duple bodies on the East Kent 1954 Lancet UF coaches surely justifies the comment - ‘How are the mighty fallen’. The ‘Croydon’ destination indicates that this coach was based at the former Bourne & Balmer depot in Dingwall Road that I would pass on my daily walk from East Croydon to school at Selhurst in the mid to late ’fifties. I was later to witness some Park Royal and Burlingham bodied Reliances formerly from that Croydon base turning up at HPTD.

Photo taken by Roger Cox, Summer 1966, East Kent Rye Depot

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